Demo (27th June) and meeting (1st July) on proposed ESOL cuts, Bethnal Green

Two points - (from person in FE, not schools) I think this was the meeting specifically about the cuts in Esol, within an impressive 30 days of action and debate at THC during which the connections between attacks and struggles in different areas were made many times (30 days because the savage cuts were announced on 5 June, with a 30 day 'consultation period' with people losing their jobs at end of term). Teachers know very well that the cuts are across the college , but it is ESOL that is taking the biggest battering. It's not wrong devote time to this. I wasn't at the meeting and heard it wasn't brilliant, but you make it sound like it was only of leftists and union hacks- I think actually there many Esol students and people from the 'partner organisations' who host classes run by Tower Hamlets College,

As far as the one day strikes, at THC these were very carefully planned for good reasons (and while I agree that the unions operate in ignorance of what others are doing, in this case it didn't make sense to do anything with the NUT). They were nothing like the usual union one day strikes over 2% pay rise or London weighting or whatever. This is why. People were ready to go for an all out strike, but doing this in the last weeks of term, after the teaching had all but finished, would have been totally useless. On the strike days, the strike began at 11 so teachers could walk out of classes, take students with them and move from their various centres across the borough to one centre so people could all assemble together to discuss and plan and take decisions - something not usually possible. Then there were two days back at work, a decision taken so teachers could attend compulsory professional development training, which this year was subverted, suspended, and became another opportunity to strengthen solidarity, meet and plan the next moves. Amazing things have happened at THC recently - it's not good enough to trot out the same old story about the unions.

If you think one day strikes are pathetic (and I usually agree) you will be glad to know that teachers at THC are now planning for all-out strike from the beginning of term. This is not going to be easy or without massive risk. Striking during enrollment, when student numbers determine how much money the college gets, is the strongest hand the FE teachers can play. Give people some credit for thinking. Reading your report makes me question the times I've jumped to my own critique-by-the-numbers conclusions without knowing much about a particular situation.

Rachel has surely had reports - undoubtedly more nuanced and informed than yours - from fellow workers on the meeting; she also may have only recently seen this thread.

There is no absolute separation between all (pure, noble, salt of the earth) workers and all (nasty, evil, machiavellian) leftists and union hacks. Some are both.

I agree, your patronising, uninformed pre-fabricated 'one-size-fits-all' comments here and on other threads about workers' struggles are quite useless - except for showing the irrelevance of repetitious ICC dogma. (Eg, http://libcom.org/news/french-explosion-threat-workers-win-redundancy-pay-18072009)

Your response to Rachel is also a shining example of comradely discussion with workers in struggle and a willingness to learn about and from the experiences of others. Well done.

Thanks for dealing with the concrete points.

Even if this was true it wouldn't justify your arrogance towards Rachel. And I'm commenting on "discussion with workers in struggle"; a new poster comes on here to discuss a struggle they are involved in and correct some of your inaccuracies - and because they don't have quite the 'correct' ICC line on the unions they are dismissed with "I could go on but it hardly seems worth it".

As for ICC "character assassination" - more like "character suicide". Go read my posts - I've argued politically and at length against the ICC, not just attacked their character. When the ICC are criticised they often end up resorting to this group persecution complex, for want of any better argument or to avoid dealing with the criticisms; 'you're just opposing our beliefs as an excuse to attack the ICC'. Then they wonder why people refer to the group "character" (which can only exist at the expense of any individual character - hence the herd mentality).

But one can hardly avoid sometimes referring to the group 'character'; the herd mentality that is expressed by their opportunist presence here and the submission to the group line that leads to the dogmatic arrogance I've criticised here and elsewhere.

On Friday myself and Alf had a meeting with some delegates from Tower Hamlets College, who have now been out on strike for over a week against the proposed cuts in ESOL and elsewhere.

Before this meeting I spoke to the union rep in our college and he said he had received the SWP article on the strike that morning. He asked me what the union was at THC and when I said 'the UCU' his response was “ah, that explains probably why I didn't know anything about it” – at our workplace the main union is the NUT.

I went ahead and phoned the number given in the SWP article and spoke to the THC union rep who may have thought I was the rep from our college, but in any case he said he would send some people over. When Alf and I met them at the college gates we explained we were not acting on behalf of the union and that it would be better if we went to a café – the three teachers who made up the delegation had no problem with this, or with our explanations of our problems with the unions, based on past experience of being told to cross picket lines etc.

The meeting was very friendly and informative. It's clear that the situation has escalated much beyond cuts in the ESOL provision that this thread initially started about. They stated that, in total, over the summer 40 jobs had been lost. 13 lecturers were fired, and the others constituted people who had taken redundancy. The had an open meeting on Thursday night, where staff from Lambeth, Southwark and Conel (College of north east London) were also present, and that they had also made reference to proposed cuts in their colleges.

Regarding the union (here the UCU) – so far the meetings have been open to all members of staff. However everything has been followed by the rule book (ballots, etc..) and there is a meeting on this coming Wednesday to review the situation. One of the delegates pointed out to us that the UNISON members (administrative staff, premises staff) had not been balloted to join them, but would be voting on the 14th September. But this was an example of how the union methods of ‘struggle’ waiting for ballots and official backing – can seriously undermine the potential for united action.

There was some discussion about the origins of these attacks. There was a lot of emphasis on the very high-handed methods of the senior management at THC, but it was agreed that there were implications which went much further than one college. It was also agreed by all that whoever came into power next spring, the next government will have a huge number of cuts it will be forced to institute, with the public sector being in the front line of these attacks.

It's clear that the ground is being tested and prepared – first we have the news that the government has been recommended to cut 10% of the NHS staff, then the next day we're told that public sector so-called 'gold plated' pensions are no longer affordable. The battle lines are already being drawn up.

We talked about the possibility of calling for a meeting at our college where a THC delegation could speak, but it was agreed that it would be better to wait until the outcome of the vote on Wednesday.